Hi, it’s your Grapevine admin, Chris here and we’re at it again – fundraising for Aran Animal Rescue who are a small but active group of volunteers who manage to rescue approximately 200 dogs each year from regional pounds who would otherwise have been put to sleep. In support of them, we are motorcycle riding 1600+km within 24 hours on the year’s shortest day – tomorrow.

Aran focus on attempting to rescue death-row dogs, and have built up strong relationships with a number of council run pounds, around New Zealand, predominantly from Northland to Whanganui. They get told when a pound has exhausted their own avenues to rehome a dog, and given an option to up-lift it, out of the area, and try to find a new forever home for them. This process is costly and will often involve having to transport, get unwell dogs back to good health, de-sexing, fostering, advertising, vetting new owners, home visits and more. It’s tireless work.

They manage to do this for around 200 dogs each year. So, for the past two years I’ve done a long distance motorcycle ride in support of them, and attached to it a fundraising effort, run through the give-a-little website.

This year, our third such event is kicking off tomorrow at 3:30am in Warkworth. We’ll be riding around most of the North Island (south of Auckland), and covering more than 1,609 km (1,000 miles) within 24 hours. This year, I’ll be taking Stella, my lovely wife on the back of the bike, and our good friend Luke Mitchell will be joining our ride too, on his first 1600+km ride.

We’ve been fundraising for a while now, and we’re really proud to have already raised ~$1/km, but there’s no upper limit on how much we would like to raise for these guys. If you’re interested in reading more about our ride, the prep for it, the route, and also find out about how you can donate, then please feel free to visit my website: https://www.wiltshire.net/ss1600-2019

Thanks, all the best, and wish us good luck and decent weather for our ride, tomorrow the shortest day of the year!…

Chris.